Cliona Lake Yacht Club

Happy 1 Month Anniversary!

2009-10-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Aion has now been live for a whole month in North America!My initial impressions are all very positive. Aion has already given me more enjoyment than I expected -- though admittedly I did purchase 6 months of service right from the start.(Photo: D Sharon Pruitt)Something I think is interesting is the amount of complaining done on the forums regarding various issues people seem to have in the

Whats going on in the starter zones?

2009-10-18T10:31:00.001-07:00

So I was playing in Verteron (I saved Alteno and Enia's marriage via the Alteno's Wedding Ring quest -- Enia will never be the wiser!) and I decided to go and check out Cliona Lake and Poeta.I teleport over and what is the first thing that happens? I get my General channel flooded with 3 level 5 mages spamming about their gold farming sites. (Photo by: Giorgio Monteforti) How about this NCSoft?

Some Interesting Posts

2009-10-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

I found these on the way home from work, and thought they were pretty interesting:Aion SourceA post about Kinah launderingA possible halloween party in Aion?Odd disscussion of the problem of too many dps, not enough healers and tanksAion ForumsAs a note -- Aion Forums seems pretty dead. What gives?Why did you roll on Elyos instead of Asmodian?The Aion Forum is about dead as well! I haven't

Making Leveling Fun: Part I

2009-10-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, I played Asheron's Call -- a wonderful MMO with really only 1 goal in mind: collecting experience and gear to make your character cooler. Both cooler because she did more damage/took less damage and cooler because her armor was all from the same model set and was all the same color/complimentary colors. (And yes, my main characters in Asheron's Call were women) At the time,

Okay, seriously I'm back.

2009-10-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Well hello there! Remember me? I recently read a comic about a character who has a blog, who only makes posts that say "Sorry I don't update this blog more often, I promise in the future I'll be better about that". And it both cracked me up and made me really nervous that this was starting to happen here.Fortunately, I have a great excuse: Japan is +16 hours from San Francisco, CA (where I

Back in the Country

2009-10-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the country! I'll probably spend a day trying to recuperate before posting here. The trip was amazing and I'm exhausted, but I've missed Aion and I can't wait to get back to leveling.I'm up to 14 (14.6 or so) and I really want to see some more content. Each zone is perfect and beautiful and I could hang around any part of the game and just admire the surroundings. Alas, I'll run

Looking for Friends (Again)

2009-10-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a few weeks since Aion has been here and since I've set up shop. I'd really like to see a community of bloggers get together and do something really interesting. Maybe an inter-blog conversation on a set topic, or guest writing/blog swapping from time to time.If you're interested, shoot me an email and we can discuss further. I think this game, since its so new, has many

Some Images: Levels 1 - 14

2009-10-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here are a few images that I have taken around the starting zones. I'm having a great time exploring Verteron, and I hope after I get back from Japan that I'll get to finish up and post some more images from there. The whole game is just so scenic!Pernos has such a cool house. I wish my apartment was like that.Beautiful detailing -- there didn't have to be a statue here, but I'm very glad

Story Time - Better Know an Empyrean Lord - Yustiel

2009-10-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yustiel is another Empyrean Lord, a Seraphim Lord, to be precise. And almost a polar opposite of Kaisinel.She hold the title of "Lady of Life" and is always in a state of happiness and positivity. In fact this passive and pacifistic outlook makes her a source of frustration for Kaisinel and it appears the two are generally opposed to one another.Yustiel is the Chanter's best friend and source

What to do with gold farmers?

2009-10-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Gold farmers are by far the biggest nuisance in Aion. It is impressive/depressing that within 1 hour of launch there were already groups set up to farm gold and sell it to us.Is there really that much profit in gold farming? Obviously there must be, or else no one would do it. I imagine in the end it leads back to either exploited workers or young people who just want to make a few extra

Top 5: Crazy New Features

2009-10-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have heard that blogs are supposed to be crazy or written by crazy people, so I thought I'd do my best to fit in.There have been many threads around on things people would like to see in Aion in the future. Lots of good ideas have been thrown out, and, of course, the usual bad ones. The Aion team has even gone so far as to put a petition in-game to let players give feedback on private stores!

Aion Update 1.5.0.8

2009-10-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

Aion Update 1.5.0.8 is live!It does not, I'm sorry to report, include the ability to burn down the building of gold farmers remotely. We're all eagerly awaiting that for 1.6. The 2 major things are: the broker now pays you for crafter items (thats a pretty big bug to miss, in my opinion) and you can now block gold farmers with a right click (a little context menu pops and you can whisper or

Leaving the Country

2009-10-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Just as a warning I will be out of the country for a vacation starting on 10/2 and lasting until 10/11.I'm off to Japan, where I have never been before, and I'm super excited. In the mean time, I will have some scheduled posts go off so be sure to check back during those 10 days. I probably will not have a post go up every day however.This is a great time to mention, though, that if you aren't

Legions

2009-09-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Legions in Aion are akin to WoW guilds and Asheron's Call Allegiances (and I'm sure many other things from many other games). I was in a popular, casual guild in Asheron's Call and a large, "hardcore casual" guild in WoW.Let me explain a bit about what that means to me. A casual guild might be, lets say, at least 75% players who spend less than 8 hours a week logged in. And maybe 33% of the time

Talking to Every NPC is Hard Work

2009-09-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of my goals when I started playing Aion, was to meet every NPC and find the interesting stories that have been hidden between characters. The quests do a great job of tying lots of NPCs together, but I figured that there must be at least a few thing woven in by the developers that most people would miss.But let me tell you, actually meeting all the NPCs to piece together any story that may or

Private Stores

2009-09-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

When I reached level 10, I decided that instead of powering through Verteron, I would explore the sanctum and spend at least a few hours exploring non-leveling features of Aion.One thing I wanted to do, however, was expand my cube, because I was having many issues with capacity. I had the problem, however, that if I wanted to expand my cube I'd have to spend all but about 150 Kinah.At the same

Questing and Crafting: Verteron

2009-09-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

I have finally made my way from my home in Poeta to the Sanctum and now onto my next task: Verteron!The best thing about Poeta is the beautiful Cliona Lake and its flying fish. Verteron, so far, has shown me 1 feature I'm especially excited about: dinosaurs! These massive ones live in Verteron's lake (and I don't see a rival yacht club -- maybe I should open a chain throughout the zones) and

Top 5: Places in Poeta

2009-09-25T09:00:00.001-07:00

Poeta is full of really fun places -- even ones that aren't Cliona Lake (flying ghost fish are pretty awesome, however). I've tried my best to check out all parts of the zone and here's what I've found to be my top 5 favorite places to hang around and just take in the scenery:5. Nymph's Pond - Home of my new favorite named evil NPC Seirenia. I'm not really sure whats up with our new friend,

Meet Daeva Arwerawr!

2009-09-25T01:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally happened, I got back to where I was in Beta and completed my ascension quest!Now, guess which class I chose? That's right -- I'm an assassin! Wait no... that isn't right...So I became a Ranger, I talked to everyone I could find in the Sanctum, and tested out my bow in Verteron.I don't quite have kiting down, but I'm working on it. And Verteron is much prettier than I thought

The First 31 People I've Met

2009-09-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Between levels 1 and 8 I have met a huge mass of NPCs in Aion: 31 (and 34 if you count Pernos's mushroom friends). What I think is really nice about the game so far, is that they try and create relationships between NPCs so they feel more like people than quest locations. For instance, the mercenaries (Elpas, Mires, Kalio, Melampus, Muraneo, and Oz to name a few) are very gossipy and the early

A solution to the queue issue

2009-09-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hope On The Horizon For Aion's Server WoesMike Fahey on Kotaku has written a long article about the queues Aion has been facing since the beginning of the Head Start program and some responses from the Aion team. What it boils down to is that many, many people want to play on the biggest servers and not move to the lower-population servers instead. Because of this, some servers have 3 hour

Story Time - Better Know an Empyrean Lord - Kaisinel

2009-09-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

But first a little introduction:Aion has 12 North American servers, 6 with East Coast clocks and 6 with West Coast clocks. The naming convention that has been applied is simple: West Coast gets the Seraphim lords, East coast gets the Shedim lords.So lets go through these lords starting with my own server, Kaisinel. (Check out the AionOnline PowerWiki for additional information).Kaisinel is a

News 09/22/2009

2009-09-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

Aion Private Shops: Is the End Near?Aion Overload links to a discussion over on AionSource regarding the future of private shops in Aion."The problem is that there are eager players that want to get in the game, that are stuck behind players leaving their shops open."I think that's a showstopper, right there -- if private shops are going to adversely affect people’s ability to actually play the

Character Creation - Initial Thoughts

2009-09-18T00:46:00.002-07:00

Character creation, I thought, was quite a bit of fun. Especially for someone like me, who has almost zero talent for drawing and painting, the controls were all intuitive and easy to manage. The preset faces and bodies, also really helped me out. What I ended up doing, was starting from a pre-created template and then I just adjusted it here and there.For me this was infinitely easier than

Welcome Arwerawr!

2009-09-18T00:46:00.001-07:00

Well, I am finally back from my trip to Seattle (went to watch the New York Yankees play baseball) and my first order of business after playing with my cat: create a character and say hello to Poeta!Now, officially, Arwerawr lives in Poeta on Kaisinel, and after about 2 and a half hours, I'm up to level 7. Now, my goal wasn't to get to ascension ultra-fast, but the developers made it pretty easy